Who’s watching you?
October 17th, 2007 by I.C.
There is no right more precious in society than the right to be left alone.
It is this ethic that guides much of the American constitutional framework, but especially the 4th Amendment.
The 4th Amendment reads:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
It is the 4th Amendment which requires a police officer to obtain a warrant before entering your house. It is the 4th Amendment which requires any government officer to have some suspicion that you’ve committed a crime before they can stop you. It is the 4th Amendment which prohibits the government from eavesdropping on any citizen without judicial approval and oversight.
Or at least in theory. Today, for the first time in United States history, the government is now actively spying on its citizens without any public outcry. This spying is being done through the use of military satellites, something I’ve written about earlier, as well as through secret programs being implemented by the National Security Agency.
And it’s not only the government that is breaching the 4th Amendment: it’s brought on board some corporate firepower. A pending lawsuit against AT&T brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation highlights the deep and troubling connections between private corporations — in this case telecom companies like Verizon and AT&T — and the federal government. There is no distinction between the two: corporations are working hand-in-hand right now with the government to illegally eavesdrop on your conversations without a warrant or any form of oversight.
The allegations of the lawsuit — based in part on the testimony and documentation of Mark Klein, a former AT&T employee — describe chilling evidence of an NSA-controlled room in the Folsom Street AT&T facilities in San Francisco, where AT&T diverts copies of Internet traffic on its network so that NSA machines can analyze the data. (You can read an illuminating interview with one of the lawyers bringing the suit here). This type of total surveillance would have made Stalin envious, and is right out of any number of dystopian novels — in addition to being grossly illegal.
And, even more shockingly, there is evidence from a former Quest CEO that the government was seeking phone company participation in this illegal spying months before 9/11, as early as February 2001.
We have entered some bizarre alternate universe where total surveillance is not only the modus operandi of the state, it has also become the accepted social norm. Americans have laws in place, including their Constitution, which prohibit the very behavior their government is now engaging in. The wording of the 4th Amendment could not be clearer: no searches and seizures, anywhere, absent reasonableness — which means probable cause and a warrant.
Of all the abuses of power and unconstitutional acts undertaken by the current Administration, none is more destructive to democracy than the revocation of the 4th Amendment. The Framers of the Constitution did not have iPhones — a great device for spying, by the way, and brought to you in part by your friends at AT&T — but they had spys, and they knew what eavesdropping was. And they prohibited it, because they knew that the government had absolutely no business in monitoring the lives of its citizens. Such a concept is an anathema to liberty.
Now, this wisdom is tossed aside.
Welcome to the surveillance state. Careful — you’re being watched.
